[Libcdio-devel] Disabling Drive Cache for Paranoia

[R. Bernstein]

In theory libcdio allows you to issue (SCSI) MMC commands and that
might work if this is command that just needs to be issued once as
opposed to on every read. If it is flag that needs to be set every
read there's still probably a way to do it.

One of the big gaps in libcdio (and to a lesser extent cdparanoia) is
a more flexible drive configuration mechanism. Something that allows a
user to indicate for this Plextor drive use FUA or some other
features.

Jason Voegele writes:
 > Hello all,
 > 
 > I'm a relative newcomer to libcdio, and I plan to use it for the CD-ROM
 > control module and CD audio extraction library for a CD ripping
 > application that I've been working on.  Currently, my application is
 > using Linux command line tools to control the CD-ROM drive (e.g. eject,
 > etc.) and is using Xiph's cdparanoia for audio extraction.  I plan on
 > using libcdio to remove my dependency on platform-specific command-line
 > tools.
 > 
 > That said, one of the major problems with cdparanoia has been its
 > inability to disable the CD-ROM drive's cache when extracting audio,
 > thus leading to rips that contain errors.  If the drive caches data,
 > then cdparanoia's strategy of doing multiple reads to ensure an
 > accurate rip fails because the drive simply returns the same erroneous
 > data on each read.
 > 
 > EAC and some other Windows rippers disable the drive's cache by using
 > the "Force Unit Access" (FUA) flag when extracting audio.  I also
 > happen to know that Xiph's cdparanoia attempts to use the FUA flag in
 > some circumstances but is very unreliable, and in fact does not work on
 > my Plextor CD-ROM drive.
 > 
 > I am wondering if libcdio's cd-paranoia library has any mechanism for
 > applying the FUA flag to audio extraction operations, or any other
 > mechanism for circumventing the drive's cache.  If not, would you
 > consider making such an enhancement for a future release?
 > 
 > Thanks.
 > 
 > --
 > Jason Voegele
 > "There is an essential core at the center of each man and woman that
 > remains unaltered no matter how life's externals may be transformed or
 > recombined. But it's smaller than we think."
 >     -- Gene Wolfe, The Book of the Long Sun
 > 
 > 
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